falling down isn’t failing. not getting up is.

We’ve all been there. That awful moment when you’ve worked so hard just to find out that…you failed.

Thomas Edison once said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways it will not work.”

So, let’s talk about failure.

Failure is defined as “lack of success.” What is a success? Well, success is reaching a goal or achieving something you’ve aimed for. We’ve all been there. You work so hard on one project, one idea, only to find out your hard work didn’t pay off.

We’ve all been there. You work so hard on one project, one idea, only to find out your hard work didn’t pay off.

Or did it?

Back in elementary school, I was part of a program called Oddessy of the Mind. You would work for months with a group of other kids on a skit. You would write the script, make the props, act, sing, dance. Everything. We would work for months on a six-minute skit, preparing for the finals.

We went in, pumped up on adrenaline and excitement, knowing that we had to win. We had done so well. The judges came around and read off the winners only to find out that we did not win.

It was the worst feeling. My heart dropped into my stomach. My eyes started to burn, a lump formed in my throat. I told myself that I still did great, but it didn’t feel like that anymore. I failed. All that hard work down the drain. It felt like it was all for naught.

But it wasn’t.

We may not have won (we did win bronze two years in a row, making it to State the next years) but we learned so much. I learned how to write scripts, how to problem solve, how to be a leader. We learned how to compromise, how to work hard. So to the other teams, we may have failed.

But to me, we won.

If you ever get down because you failed, take a step back. Failure is another word for learned. Just because one way doesn’t work, that doesn’t mean you have to stop. Get back up. Brush yourself off. Look at what you did, and find a better way to do it. Redefine your success. You did not fail.

You learned.

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” -Winston Churchill.